Ursa Ag In Alberta Wants To Sell Farmers Tractors With A Diesel Engine

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Dan Allard is a small farmer in New Hampshire — some hay, with a few cows, pigs, and chickens. He also has a large vegetable garden where he grows most of his own food. He’s not someone who has 40 field hands and drives a Ford F-350 King Ranch Super Duty Platinum. In fact, from what I understand, much of his time is taken up with fixing the farm equipment he relies on, most of which is several decades old.

Farmers by tradition are skilled mechanics who are accustomed to fixing things themselves. They may not actually forge new pistons for their tractor engines by hand, but when it comes to welding, brazing, or jury rigging a piece of equipment, they have no equal. That skill set has brought them into conflict with equipment manufacturers like John Deere, which insists the electronic components built into its machines — of which there are many — are proprietary items that can only be repaired or replaced by its factory authorized service people.

Complex Machines For A Complex World

That is not necessarily an unreasonable policy. As farm equipment comes loaded with more electronics, repair parts that rely on microprocessors to work must authenticate themselves before the central computers allow them to access a vehicle’s operating system. Certainly manufacturers have a right to protect themselves from unauthorized repairs that could destabilize those carefully created operating systems — like exhaust emission controls — don’t they?

Maybe, but do they also have the right to restrict access to repair parts so that repairs can only be made by factory authorized technicians and refuse to provide repair manuals for their products? Right to repair is an ongoing controversy in many industries, one that has led to plenty of ruffled feathers and bad feeling between manufacturers and their customers.

Affordable And Dependable

Ursa Ag in Alberta, Canada, says its business model is based on “the need for affordable, dependable tractors. Simple designs that eliminate unnecessary electronics, computers and sensors. Our tractors are built without computer controls — by design. This intentional simplicity delivers reliability.” It also means the tractors and other farm equipment it sells cost about half of what the high tech models from industry leaders costs.

According to Caleb Jacobs of The Driven, the heart of each tractor offered by Ursa Ag is a 5.9 liter Cummins diesel engine with tried and true technology — one intake and one exhaust valve per cylinder, all mechanical controls, and no electronics whatsoever. A mechanical fuel injection pump feeds the cylinders.

And get this — the engines are remanufactured, not new! People who want an Ursa Ag machine prefer the reliability of a reman engine over the perils of a new engine packed with electronic controls, said Doug Wilson, the person who started Ursa Ag. Those engines are about as basic as dirt and as solid as granite. Reliability is what farmers want, not fancy doodads that break down at the worst possible moment.

Ursa Ag offers two 5.9 liter diesels, one rated at 150 hp and the other at 180 hp. It also has an 8.3 liter Cunmins rated at 260 hp for those who need more grunt in their fields. Jacobs says the larger engine is “just like you’d find in combines from the 1990s.”

Ursa Ag builds most of the components it needs in-house and sources parts it can’t build from external suppliers. The cab comes from an outside party, but it’s about as simple as the engine under the hood. Its only accessory is an air ride seat. “All the controls are mechanically connected, so there’s no finicky circuit board to worry about,” Jacobs said.

Wilson’s primary focus with Ursa Ag is to sell equipment that is affordable and serviceable by third party shops. “Because the 12 valve Cummins has powered everything from farm machinery to pickup trucks and more over the years, practically everyone with wrenching knowledge has experience with them. Parts are also easy to come by, so downtime isn’t a concern,” Jacobs wrote.

Buy Direct

Ursa Ag has a small dealer network in Canada, or customers can buy directly from the manufacturer. Wilson said the company hasn’t built a massive chain of stores because it wouldn’t be able to keep them stocked, even though the company plans to build more tractors in 2026 than it has in the rest of its relatively short history combined.

At a time when a fully equipped tractor can sell for as much as $400,000 or more, the Ursa Ag 150 is priced at $129,900 CAD (US$95,156.30), and the Ursa Ag 180 costs $149,900 CAD ($109,807). The 260 hp tractor is priced at $199,900 CAD ($146,433.75). Wilson said that’s roughly half the price of comparable Zetor tractors and far less than a John Deere.

Wilson said he can ship to customers in the US, although Ursa Ag does not currently have any distributors there — yet. A recent interview with Farms.com had led to lots of inquiries, with about 400 of them coming from the United States. Jacobs said, “This seems like the best of both worlds. Unless you have a massive operation, something like an Ursa Ag unit likely makes more financial sense than a big name product. Hopefully, they can keep up with the demand.”

Too Clever By Half

Some readers may think it odd for CleanTechnica, which is a passionate advocate for electric vehicles, to be showcasing a product with a diesel engine, but there is a reason. The Ursa Ag represents more than a different choice for those who need a tractor to earn a living. It is a response to the “computer on wheels” mentality first popularized by Elon Musk and Tesla.

Hailed as the greatest advance since the invention of the wheel, it has led to products that are completely dependent on electronics. That in turn means owners cannot repair them and are dependent on manufacturer’s service personnel when a glitch occurs. Did we mention those repairs can be quite expensive if the product is out of warranty?

Musk, as per usual, has taken things to their logical limits and beyond by removing the stalks that control the windshield wipers and gear selection on newer Tesla cars. Other automakers have piled into the all-electronic space, replacing most if not all controls with touchscreen menus and haptic features that many people find counter-intuitive. Now many companies are going back to old fashioned knobs and levers for things like radios and climate controls.

Slate, the new company that says it will build a basic electric pickup truck, is tapping into an idea that is gaining momentum. Like Ursa Ag, it will appeal to those who want transportation, not a video arcade experience. I confess I am one of those people. For more decades than I care to count, I did all my own oil changes and learned how to replace brake rotors, calipers, and brake pads. I had to. I was addicted to British cars and owned a string of Jaguars and MGs. If I had to pay someone to maintain them, I would have been in the poor house long ago. I even learned to do my own wheel alignments.

Today, I drive a Tesla Model Y. Most days when I first get in, the wipers come on for a swipe or two even on a clear day. Yesterday in a downpour, the wipers refused to come on at all. For 15 minutes, I was giving voice commands to the central computer to turn the wipers on, turn the wipers off, turn the wipers to Auto — all to no avail. Something that should be so simple turned into a hassle that filled me with anxiety when I should have been concentrating on my driving in white-out conditions. And Elon thinks I should trust the car to drive itself? Not a chance in hell of that happening!

A few days ago, I wrote about how lots of people are souring on the AI thing. The point is that when we cede control over our lives to machines, we forfeit some of our personal freedom for the sake of  convenience. But that convenience comes with a cost, and for a small but growing group of people, that cost is much too high. That’s why companies like Ursa Ag (and maybe Slate) exist. They are exploiting the dissatisfaction many people feel when their lives are taken over by social media and machines.

My old Irish grandmother liked to say that some people were too clever by half. That phrase could be applied to just about any of those leading us down the primrose path to a technological future where we find, much to our surprise, that our digital servants have become our masters.